Have Time, Will Travel: Confessions Of A Desi Time Traveller
Hi. Apologies for not posting as often as I usually do.
It’s not for lack of wanting. I’m a compulsive writer and reader, the kind who can sit all day and keep typing until they drag me away kicking and screaming.
After I first realized I seriously intended to become a writer, at age 9, I began keeping a journal.
A year or two later I had an entire shelf of journals and around the age of 14 I stopped and estimated how much I had written – it worked out to an average of around 5000 words a day.
And that’s not counting the several hundred poems, stories, plays, articles, and bits of unfinished novels – including one 3000-page monstrosity called ‘With Dawn’ (after a Tagore poem).
Anyway, to get back to the point: I’ve been travelling of late. And will continue to travel, in little hops, each time coming back briefly to civilization for a day or three depending on necessity.
Often in areas where even cellphones don’t work and there’s no power for most of the day (though, mercifully, it’s there at nights).
So blogging is just not possible.
And I’m deliberately not carrying a computer, by choice. This is strictly a non-writing trip, in the physical sense of writing.
Mentally, of course, a writer never stops writing. I once ‘wrote’ a largeish chunk of a story in my head because I didn’t have access to a typewriter, back before I owned a computer.
When I finally got to a typewriter, the words just poured out of me like water.
But then again, the words usually just pour out of me like water, or thickish bright orange-red arterial blood.
Anyway, thanks to those of you who heaped all those compliments on the stories I posted. I’m amazed that those little forgotten pieces of my past can still evoke such reactions.
Maybe I should seriously reconsider my long-ago promise to never publish a collection of my own short pieces.
Maybe. No promises though. I have a major block against writers publishing short pieces in book form. In my view, a book is a book, not a collection of previously published bits and pieces. But I’m open to changing my mind.
Also, thanks to those of you who voted on the comments link to restart the Epic India Yahoo Group. And those of you who emailed me directly as well. I count some 20-odd votes, which is not bad, considering most of you reading this blog don’t even know what the group was about.
Well, it was a kind of space where I would chat freely about anything and everything under the sun, and so could anyone else. No holds barred, on views political, or otherwise.
Though it’s not a rant group, mind you, the purpose is to further discussion on Indian literary matters, cultural ideas, history, etc.
I’ve been thinking about it while away, and one thing I wasn’t very happy about was the seclusion of the group. That is, us posting only to each other, shut-off, as it were.
I was thinking I would rather have a bulletin-board kind of space. Wherein you post your comments and they get added directly to the web page itself, for all to see.
I’m exploring both options, and one thing I can promise you, the Group will restart in June, to coincide with the launch of Armies of Hanuman in India.
So that’s about it for now.
It’s back to the travelling and researching and dreaming-and-driving that refills my writing batteries so effectively.
I’ll post from time to time, and try to cache a couple of stories or reviews to be put up at intervals.
Meanwhile, you take care.
Live well. Be good to those who love you.
Read well. Work well.
And hell, just be well.
I hear Alvin the Chipmunk and Akon calling me. They’re feeling lonely…so lonely…they’re Mr Lonely.
Aw, nuts.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 at 9:09 am. It is filed under Ashok.
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